Tag: "going_global"

The Crunchies Awards are hosted by TechCrunch every year, and focus on spotlighting startups that shine in a variety of categories. We're up for the Best International Startup award, but in order to win it, we need your help. It would make our year to win — the Crunchies are like the Oscars of the tech industry.  So if you think we're awesome, vote here and tell all your friends. Voting closes in just a couple of hours, so be sure to vote now! Thanks for all your support! ›Read more

This is the second section of a two-part series in which we discuss the benefits of having a Japanese mascot and how to create your own. The first part was published last week and is here. Last week, we discussed how mascots can help to promote a brand’s image in Japan and how they can be used to build a better relationship with your customers and clients. However, in order to start doing that, you’ll need to bunch together some cute pixels first. If you’re at a bit of a loss about what a good mascot should look like, don’t worry — that’s what we're here to help with. Putting t... ›Read more

Last May, we traveled to Chile as part of the Geeks on a Plane South America event, and had some great experiences and met some amazing people.  In case you aren't familiar with it, Geeks on a Plane is a seasonal tour organized by 500 Startups that brings investors and startups on tours of areas that are rapidly becoming technology hotspots. They just wrapped up an East Asia tour, and they'll be hitting the roads again in December for a tour of India. We'll be posting a recap of our CEO Robert Laing's trip to China with the GOAP crew shortly. But for now, check out our CTO Matt... ›Read more

Have you seen a mascot today? If you’re in Japan, chances are you have — be it the SUICA penguin and PASMO robot (pictured left) or the Softbank dog, you’re surrounded by them, because they're everywhere. In front of stores, on bus seats, on your food packaging. But why does every company seem to have one?  Some, like Matt Alt, the co-author of Hello, Please! Very Super Helpful Characters from Japan, theorize that the abundance of cute characters (kawaii-kyarakutaa) in Japan has to do with the country's roots: "Mascots in Japan, particularly anthropomorphic ones (products with... ›Read more

Crowdsourcing has become so widely used that it’s sometimes hard to believe that it was added into the Merriam-Webster database only a few days ago. Their online dictionary defines “crowdsourcing” as: the practice of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people and especially from the online community rather than from traditional employees or suppliers. The art of collaboration certainly is not a new invention, but it’s really only in the last few years that people have started to use "crowdsourcing" in contexts outside... ›Read more

What’s in a name? If you’re in China — the world’s second largest economy — a lot. In a country where each character carries its own unique meaning, the characters used to transliterate a company’s name can make or break it. In order for an international company to successfully break into the competitive Chinese market, the characters they trademark must follow a few rules. Allan Max, one of our Chinese Senior Translators, ranked them: 1. The name should sound similar to the brand’s English name.  2. It should be easily remembered and easy for Chinese people to pronounce. ... ›Read more

In our never-ending quest to go global, we've just added English to Arabic translation to our list of supported language pairs. Not only is Arabic the 15th language we've supported, but it is also the very first language we've offered that can only be written from right to left (a full post on the technical challenges involved is coming soon on our dev blog).  As mentioned in the first installment of our Going Global report (available for download here), Arabic speakers online have increased 2500% in the past decade, and this has made the translation of online content into Arabic i... ›Read more

We may like language, but we love seeing people go global with their products, be it a mobile app or a newly translated website. So when we heard that TripLingo had begun offering Dari — a Persian dialect spoken in Afghanistan — as one of the many options available for their popular language-learning app, we were pretty happy. After all, it's hard not to be impressed by a company that has taken advantage of rapidly developing mobile technology to help the greater good.  An August 10 CNN article has the scoop... According to the article, the language-learning mobile app creator... ›Read more

Our latest report, Going Global: What You Need to Know, Now has just been released and is now available for download.   This is the first in a three part series aimed at giving businesses the tools and information they need to make informed decisions about when, where, and how to take their product to global markets. Lots of "global" businesses are operating only within the U.S. and Europe while others offer online services freely available anywhere in the world but aren't spending resources on localizing their brand and content for non-English markets. This first section of the... ›Read more